Dashmonkey

My friend came to me with an idea of a pneumatic potato cannon and I couldn't get over it. I'm a huge pussy when it comes to explosives near me since I heard about some guy blowing his nuts off after he put to much propane in his PC and shot it off between his legs. So I though a pneumatic one would kick ass.

I found this site on how to make one

http://members.aol.com/sph911/spud/pneumatic.html

But before I spend some moolah building one, I wanted to know if anyone else has had any experiance in this field. My buddie claims it can put a golf ball through a fridge door at 150 ft, but im not to sure about that. Some feedback on how well they work, how safe they are, and how hard they are to build and other stuff like that would kick ass.

MSD

Easy to build, safe, very effective, can put a potato out of sight.

tropple

Holy crap! Those are the coolest spud guns I have ever seen. Absolutely amazing. Those things put my coke can/tape ball cannon to shame.

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Dashmonkey

Im still putting mine together, but my friend jsut finiashed his...and holy crap...that thing 0wnz. With his bike pump we managed to get the PSI to about 189. Even with the shitty mechanical switch we managed to get a potato about 150~190 ft. The only bad thing is it has HUGE kick, nearly landed on my ass the first time. about 20 potatoes later we heard the cops and cheesed is teh fuck outta there, but tomorrow we are going to try and get PVC pipe the size of a golf ball and see what chaos we can stir up.

tooblekane

i shot a barbie out of a potato cannon once .. it wasn't a sniper rifle though. that'd be way more fun .. i may be bookmarking this site.

SaltPork

My brother-in-law made one and I was so enamored with it, he made me an even bigger one for my birthday. We use aerosol hair spray for the "propulsion" system, the downside to that is all the workings get pretty gunked up after a few misfires. You also have to be quick to seal the chamber after filling it full of hairspray. In any case we can launch a potato about 900-1000 feet with it...pretty fucking cool.

He had a set of concrete steps in his backyard. We armed and fired from about 100 ft away and broke a small chunk off of one of the stairs. Scared the shit out of us. Up to that point it was a fun toy, but we then realized how much power it actually has.

Nighttime launches are absolutely spectacular. Since we use white pvc and we're using an explosion to eject the potato, the whole thing glows orange and belches fire about 6ft from the end of the tube.

I highly recommend that everyone at least witness a spud gun, endless entertainment.

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It was like that when I got here....I swear.

krazykemist

Here is my setup

I too wasn't too keen on the idea of PVC + explosive propellant so decided to go metal + air. The 1" barrel is perfect for small potatos and smokebombs. 1/2" works great for acorns, m80's. 1/4" was for miniature arrows and firecrackers with an extended fuse. With the 1/2" barrel and the bike pump I was able to shoot a marble 4" into a styrofoam archery block from 20 feet. I have never felt unsafe using this setup. I have another piece that is not pictured that has a guage that is inserted between the valve and the barrel for when I connect it to the compressor.

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"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." -- Tolstoy

MSD

It's decided. I'm building that rifle

YellowBlaze654

damn this stuff looks like fun.... i like your suit case of fun krazy kermist
i might try to make one during xmas vacation

BoltedDown

I built a unit that would be about the size of what krazykemist has there. It was made out of ABS plastic. It had a 1" U-shaped sprinkler valve and two 9V batteries.

I could pump it up to about 100psi and put a tennis ball out of sight. We had it hooked up to a standard air compressor, so we were 'teathered.'

All in all, it worked well, sounded very cool, and took about 20 minutes to build (not including glue dry time).

-BD


BTW, did anyone catch the last episode of Monster Nation? A few people built a rather large air cannon. It launched a gallon container of mustard 800 yards!

tropple

Oh, man. I wish I'd seen that mustard jar burst! Damn. I must have been really impressive.

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BoltedDown

On the first shot... they used little or no wadding, so it blew up the barrel. That was pretty impressive. For the next shot, they used about an inch of cardboard. It did the trick and that sucker went flying.

I gotta build me one!

-Rick